In the e-reading space, the standard today is e-Ink which powers the screens on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and most of the dedicated ebook reading devices. E-Ink provides a good ink-on-paper reading experience in natural light and has low power consumption for a long battery life. But it’s still expensive to manufacture, only available in black and white, and suffers from slow screen refresh rates which affect things like scrolling and video (not possible currently), and leads to the annoying flash seen when turning pages on ebook readers.

Fujitsu and Bridgestone announced developments this year which address some of these issues, including colour which will be especially important for advertising-driven newspapers and magazines. But the most interesting “game changer” looks like the modified LCD technology coming out of a US/Taiwan start-up called Pixel Qi, founded by Mary Lou Jepsen whose design credits include the innovative screen technology behind the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).

Pixel Qi’s innovation is to take the LCD and improve it rather than starting with a completely new technology. The ubiquitous LCD provides the good colour saturation and video-switching speed that e-papers lack to which Pixel Qi adds the longer battery life and sunlight readability features needed for effective e-reading and mobile operation. It does this through three selectable screen modes to suit the different reading and operating requirements. The other feature of Pixel Qi’s system that’s likely to boost its chances and reduce costs is that it can be manufactured using existing LCD manufacturing equipment and processes. The screens are scheduled to go into manufacturing later this year. No device manufacturers planning to use it have been named yet.

More in this article from E-paper Central.

Video of Pixel Qi founder Mary-Lou Jepsen demonstrating the Pixel Qi vs Kindle vs traditional LCD laptop.

By the way, after you’ve checked out this latest round of e-reader news, you might want to pop across to the poll running on the Digital Publishing Forum website. It asks, “What is the most likely way for people to read ebooks?”.

Now, on to the news and rumours.

First up, there’s another round of rumours about a pending release of a tablet-type device from Apple that would give the Kindle a run for its money in the ebook reading space, though the device certainly wouldn’t be marketed by Apple as an ebook reader. Now dubbed a ‘mediapad’ (at least in the rumour circles), it’s a cross between an iPhone and a netbook, with a larger screen and lighter weight, and it will handle all of your media needs, including movies and music. It goes without saying, it will also look better than the Kindle. The original Businessweek rumour even includes an artist’s rendition of the new device — check out the video for this, though it’s not quite in Apple’s design league. The same rumour has an ‘iPhone lite’ also on the horizon. All of this Apple activity will no doubt have impressed on Amazon the need to own a share of the iPhone/iPod universe too.

Closer to reality is the imminent launch of a new BeBook ebook reader. BeBook’s new model looks especially interesting because it includes a smaller 5-inch (127mm) e-Ink display and rumours have it possibly selling for around US$200, about US$150 less than the Kindle and Sony Reader. This is getting down to the price point of a low-end iPod Touch or mid-range cellphone so if true, it will get interesting. The BeBook is one of the handful of e-readers coming out of small start-ups, many of them European companies rebadging (and in some cases customising firmware) on units built in Asia. In this case, it’s probably from Chinese manufacturer Hanlin. 

Another Euro ebook that looks quite nice and has been around for a while now is the Cybook Gen 3 from Bookeen. It looks like this might finally be getting ePub support. It’s surprising that an otherwise good ebook reader has been lacking the ability to read ePub books for so long but this should certainly help its sales prospects.

Cybook Gen 3 ebook reader

And not forgetting yesterday’s story about a promising development in colour e-reading technology from tyre maker, Bridgestone.

No word yet on any of this reaching our shores but no doubt some enterprising souls will be keeping a close eye on things.

The company is initially aiming it at more mundane applications such as price tags in supermarkets and other distribution and logistics applications. But it expects its technology, called QR-LPD, to find a place in e-reading devices for books, magazines and newspapers.

The display has a touch sensitive screen and is flexible. As with the better-known (but still black and white) e-Ink system used on the Kindle and Sony readers, the Bridgestone screen has a long battery life since power is only used to change page images, not to retain them. In common with all of these displays, though, its screen refresh is currently slow — up to 15 seconds for the Bridgestone device. Probably not a problem with supermarket price tags but a definite impediment with ebook readers. The company claims that much faster systems are already in the works.

Supermarket price tag using colour e-paper

One advantage the Bridgestone display might have over the recently released FLEPia colour ebook reader from Fujitsu is price. Bridgestone has developed a “roll to roll” manufacturing process for its e-paper that is similar to the way newspapers are printed on web printing presses. In its case, rolls of plastic are imprinted with the electronic ink. The cost-effectiveness will be further aided if Bridgestone can boost its volumes by targeting industrial applications rather than relying on the still-small ebook reader market.

More on this story from epapercentral. And here’s a video clip of the device.

The 8″ / 20cm device sports a 260,000 colour e-paper display built using Fujitsu’s own patented FLEPia screen technology and has an impressive 40 hour battery life with continuous use or 2400 page turns. It’s well-featured, coming with WiFi wireless, Bluetooth, a mini USB port, and a touch screen. This enables the use of a soft on-screen keyboard and, combined with the Windows CE5 operating system, provides much of the capability of a computer including email, word processing and spreadsheets. Books are stored on a removable 4GB SD card.

Fujitsu itself doesn’t refer to the FLEPia as an ebook reader. The term it uses is “e-paper mobile terminal” pointing again to a wider view of its likely uses.

It was only a few weeks ago that the FLEPia was being field-trialled in a Tokyo restaurant so its commercial release has come pretty quickly. Fujitsu says that improvements have been made as a result of the trial, including better colour saturation and speed of page refresh, still not quick at about two seconds but almost twice as quick as the trialled unit.

The Flepia at this stage is only available in Japan where it will retail for about US$1000. It goes on sale immediately via Fujitsu’s online store.

The dual touchscreen allows one side to be used as a keyboard in  a conventional computer configuration, or the computer can be flipped on its side with an expansive double page spread and colour to liven up your book, magazine or multimedia display.

What do you think? Your next ebook reader?

Thanks to PC World NZ for this one.

As you can see from the Kindle comparison, it offers plenty of space and still weighs in at a modest 550 grams. At this price, you can get a well-spec’d budget notebook computer so it’s fair to say that this isn’t aimed at the consumer market and would be more likely to find a home in a corporate niche such as technical documentation.

But would you buy one of these if this rumour turned out to be true? TechCrunch reports well-backed rumours that Apple is lining up a large screen version of its iPod Touch for a late 2009 release. With a 7- or 9-inch screen, access to the iTunes store/iPhone apps and Apple’s legendary ease of use and consumer-friendly design, this is more likely to have the eBookers drooling. Probably closer in price to the iRex 1000S but who’d choose the latter when this is the competition?

Read full review of the iRex 1000S: Lightning Review: iRex Digital Reader 1000S Lightning Review

Read the TechCruch rumour piece on the big format iPod Touch.

It shares the light weight, paperback size and E-Ink display of its more expensive competitors along with the long battery life, claimed to be 8000 page turns on a single charge.

The eSlick comes from Foxit Software, a specialist in software for Adobe’s PDF format. This probably explains the narrow range of formats supported by the eSlick — essentially just text and PDF, none of the specialist ebook formats.

But Foxit has provided the reader with PDF creation software that it claims will convert any printable document “in one click” to reflowable PDF ebooks in a minute or so. Formats include DOC, HTML, XLS, TXT and PPT. This opens up the reader to newspapers, magazines and web pages as well as ebooks. Text can be zoomed from 50-400 per cent and the reflowable feature means that text can be set to automatically reflow to fit the size of screen.  

eSlick reader with its slim 9.2mm profile weighs in at 180g. Dimensions are 188 x 118 x 9.2mm.

There’s no wireless or mobile connectivity so files are transferred from a PC via a USB. This might not be a problem for book readers but might become a chore if you like to stock up your reading device with fresh news content on a regular basis. 

The unit comes with 128MB of internal memory and takes SD memory cards (a 2GB card is included). The eSlick also doubles as an MP3 player. 

Foxit plans to sell its reader from its website initially with retail distribution planned shortly.

Read more at PC World.

Among the new features of the PRS 700 is a touch screen with a stylus and on-screen QWERTY keyboard, the ability to annotate books, search for phrases, turn pages with a swipe (new) or button press—and to do this more quickly and largely flicker-free apparently—and a built-in backlight for reading in low-light conditions. The new unit will cost about US$400, a premium of US$100 over the lower-spec PRS 505, and is 10 percent heavier at about 280g. Its internal storage is sufficient for about 350 books, twice the PRS 505′s internal storage capacity.

The one notable absence is wireless. Sony says it’s committed to providing a future wireless option but hasn’t committed to a date. Encouragingly, its reason for the delay is its desire to have a more open system with multiple choices of carrier, bookstores, etc. That will certainly win Sony industry and hopefully consumer plaudits. While rival Amazon already offers wireless, which scores positive ratings for its usabilit, it comes at the expense of openness and means you have to support Amazon for the access to commercial content.

Just as interesting as the hardware announcement was Sony’s indication, via announced organisational  changes, that it’s ready to treat the Reader as a serious new product opportunity and get behind it. A single new US-based division will now take over the product. Currently it’s run from Japan and several groups oversee different components. Among its new marketing initiatives, Sony plans to hire 1000 people to do in-store demos of the ebook readers to help consumers understand what the products do.

See original press release for Sony PRS-700.

Unlike the iPhone, Google’s Android is an open software platform that will be available to any hardware of application provider who wants to create products for it. The first phone comes from Taiwanese computer make HTC and, in its US and UK market launches, is tied to the T-Mobile cellphone network.

This review from the Industry Standard offers a good look at the phone and its features. While not quite an iPhone killer in its first incarnation, it looks like a pretty good debut with lots of potential for development and expansion through third party activity. Maybe the mobile world is about to see a repeat of the Windows vs Mac battle that’s been a feature of the PC world for decades – the Mac is the slickest, most beautiful implementation but Windows is ‘good enough’ and has a huge developer and hardware following.

As well as running on mobiles, Android will run on PCs, Macs and Linux, further extending the range of devices that are likely to appear with Android under the hood.

In the ebook space, no sign yet of the open source FBReaderfor Android. The project website is still showing the pre-release v 0.2 dated May 8 as the latest version.